We returned to At River’s Edge RV Resort in Brookings this year for a month’s stay.
This nice place is situated on the Chetco River, about two miles upstream of the Brookings Boat Basin. It’s just far enough inland to avoid most of the morning fog that blankets the coast until late morning. Lots of big trees everywhere one looks, a healthy river right in front of our windshield, paved sites, and good staff. High temps have ranged from 70 to 84 with cool nights.
The RV park is close enough to the ocean that the tidal changes affect the level of the Chetco River. The high-to-low tide swing is about five feet. Some people like to kayak or paddleboard in the river. Vinnie likes to walk along the river in the water a couple of inches deep. Baby and BonBon don’t seem as interested.
The RV park property has about half of the river bottom land left to develop. Right now, there is a big pasture with volleyball, horseshoes, and room to play ball with the dogs. The gal in the office told me that the owner is considering putting pickleball courts in that area, among other things. I’m sure they will do a good job, as the rest of the park is an A+.
Brookings is the very southernmost city on the Oregon coast (only five miles to California) and is a great jumping-off point for exploration of many wonderful oceanside scenes.
Samuel Boardman Scenic Corridor is just a few miles north on Hwy 101 with spectacular views of the steep cliffs festooned with pine trees, beautiful beaches tucked into the coast, rock islands just offshore, and lots of marine flora and fauna.
The beach just south of the Brookings harbor jetty might be the “Driftwood Capital” of America. The mile-long strand is littered with driftwood logs of all sizes. Some amateur architects regularly pile up larger driftwood logs into makeshift shelters, probably where they go in the evening to drink, smoke weed, and do other juvenile things.
One BAD thing about Oregon is that hard liquor is only sold at State-licensed stores. There is only one of them in Brookings and it is currently closed for some reason. I ran out of Tequila about two weeks into our stay and had to drive about 35 miles north to Gold Beach to re-stock. To my surprise, three large bottles of cheap Tequila cost me $57.
I am a nice guy, I think, but I’d sure like to punch some old lady in the face.
I was walking through a supermarket here in Brookings when I rounded a corner and met up with an old bitty who immediately coughed right in my face without so much as an “excuse me”. Thanks a lot, M’aam! Two days later I had a head cold and, two days after that, Charlie had it. Lots of nasal congestion, runny noses, coughing, sneezing, and just feeling pooped.
Charlie has had several rough weeks health-wise. First was chronic heartburn. Then, constipation. This was followed by a nasty urinary tract infection. When those last two problems finally abated, I gave her the Old Lady’s Sinus Cold.
Next up: AIDS, leprosy, or maybe Lou Gehrig’s Disease. We never got Covid-19, so maybe it’s now our time for that.
We have been thinking about next year’s RV road trip… assuming, of course, that we survive this one.
We’d like to retrace this year’s trip because Charlie really enjoyed seeing her kin up in Idaho. We will re-book Florence for a month, but we will not return to Sun Resorts-Coos Bay because they’ve decided to increase rates by about 50 percent. We would like to return here to At River’s Edge in Brookings. So, that leaves about a month that we need to arrange between Florence and Brookings. At this point, I’m thinking that we will spend that time in Gold Beach (Turtle Rock) and maybe the Oceanfront RV Park here in Brookings.
We’ll see.
The dogs are doing well. Vinnie is showing more maturity with each passing day. We got him a new “no pull” harness for his walks out in public and he seems to understand the concept. He’s also doing less lunging at other dogs that happen by. He turned 3 years old the other day, just about the age that JayJay was when we adopted him. It took JayJay about a year on the leash before he settled down, so I think Vinnie is right on schedule. He is a GOOD DOG and he loves me a lot.
I have been trying to be nice to Charlie during her illnesses by recording a lot of Hallmark movies. Yeah, they’re stupid, sappy, and predictable, but they put a smile on her face, which is always welcome. We supplement those rom-coms with the usual murder docudramas, home remodeling shows, movies, and news specials.
Speaking of news, the downtown area of Lahaina on Maui in the Hawaiian Islands burned to the ground while we were in Brookings. It was a wonderful place before the fire. Charlie and I (along with six other couples) stayed in Lahaina for a week years ago at country/western singer Randy Travis’ spiffy mansion/compound just a short walk from the downtown area. We golfed every day, cooked up BBQ next to the pool, drank a lot, and frequented the tourist traps (like Bubba Gump’s, the giant Banyan tree, Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville joint, etc.) as well.
We had a lot of fun that week. We played a golf tournament every day at a different course. I played crappy but had a GREAT time. One day when we went into downtown Lahaina, I went into a novelty gift joint and bought a large, authentic-looking penis squirt gun. That pecker looked real. When I got back to the property, I sat on a deck chair playing cards with the guys, all the while displaying my large Johnson sticking out of my board shorts. When the wives returned from whatever they had been doing, I noticed some of them noticing my protruding junk, blushing, but not saying anything. At about that time, I pulled out the squirt gun and sprayed them. Lots of laughs.
I will miss the good times in Lahaina.
(Which reminds me of another place that no longer exists: the Palapa Bar in Ambergris Caye, Belize. It was a renowned watering hole/floating bar joint that everyone frequented when vacationing in that island paradise. Unfortunately, just after we visited the place (while on a cruise with son Jeff and wife Carol), a Category Five hurricane devastated Ambergris Caye and wiped the Palapa Bar from the map.
Mother Nature can be a bitch.
Our home back in Mesquite has been weathering some nasty heat lately. It’s been so hot that many properties, including ours, have experienced leaking drip irrigation pipes in their landscaped yards. The problem is two-fold: Relentless heat penetrating the ground; and, the cheap quality of the irrigation lines that were installed by the builder, Pulte Homes. We’ve had two leaks this Summer that were caught by observant neighbors.
Our landscape guy, Kenedy, fixed the lines, but not until the water bill jumped by $30.
Tropical storm “Hilary” came up from Mexican waters this week to wreak some havoc in the Southwest. Our town of Mesquite, Nevada was spared. However, San Diego got drenched and Death Valley got a year’s worth of rain in one day. Mount San Jacinto, which is about sixty miles east of our old house in Southern California, got 10 inches of rain in a 24-hour period causing a lot of flooding down in the Palm Springs area.
Could have been a lot worse, though.
More and more unusual weather events are happening worldwide, undoubtedly caused by the fact that the earth’s atmosphere is warming. More temperatures over 100 degrees, more glaciers disappearing, more violent weather episodes, more wildland fires, and more incidence of storm damage along the coasts as sea levels rise.
We’ve been coming to Oregon in the Summer for the past eight years and it seems that there are always forest fires in Oregon an northern California when we are here. This year is no exception, as there are several fires ongoing that we will have to deal with when we head east and south. We are going to have to make a 100-mile detour when we head over to Grants Pass. It’s a beautiful drive, along the coast, but it will add a couple of hours to our travel day.
Bummer.
We have a few more days left in Brookings before we head out. We “go out” to dinner once a week (we call it Date Night), and this week we’re going to enjoy a nice meal at a place called “Superfly”. It’s one of our go-to joints in Brookings, along with “Catalyst” (a seafood restaurant), “Fat Irish”, and a couple of Mexican joints (“La Flor de Mexico” and “Rancho Viejo”). There are many more, but we don’t go out that much.
Charlie’s medical condition (hiatal hernia, GIRD) needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.
Our itinerary Brookings would have included three nights in Grants Pass, a night in Weed, a night in Susanville, three nights in Reno, two nights in Twin Lakes, two nights in June Lake, two nights at Mono Lake, and one night in Tonopah. The initial reason for that swing south was that our son Tim and wife Shanon were going to meet us in Reno and accompany us home to Mesquite, giving Tim a chance to familiarize himself with the RV. However, Tim and Shanon had to cancel their plans due to illness/loss of vacation days.
As it turned out, a swarm of forest fires in Oregon and northern California made traveling over to Grants Pass and then south problematic. With Charlie’s medical problem still outstanding, we decided to head home immediately, taking the same northerly route that we used to get to Oregon in May.
We should be home on September 1st, assuming that we don’t encounter any major problems.
This year’s RV road trip was very relaxing, the weather was outstanding, there were no major equipment issues, and the five of us got to spend many hours of intimate togetherness.
Exactly what the doctor ordered.